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If you don't care about space exploration you're much worse than anti-science. If you care more about "billions of dollars" than about whether humanity populates places outside of the Earth your problem isn't with science, it's with having a tiny point of view. Essentially, not caring about the expansion of humanity through space puts you closer to animals, which only care about eating, reproducing and surviving.

However, it's not the same to consider that it might not be the appropriate moment for space exploration (for example because humanity should first work on discovering better propulsion systems) than to just don't care about it.

Not caring about space exploration is similar to not caring about philosophy, art or history. It just makes you less human and more beast.

Yup. Tang was it! Tang was the only thing invention wholly created or accelerated by the space race.I know I am feeding a troll but if anybody believes that ignorant statement they really need to go crack a book before ever considering voting.

No one has actually looked much. It's worth noting that two of the largest deposits of gold and platinum group metals (PGM), the Bushveld complex in South Africa and the Norilsk-Talnakh deposit in Siberia are both created by igneous processes possibly in conjunction with asteroid impacts, processes which happen on the Moon just as well.

The Norilsk-Talnakh deposit is actually a feature of the Siberian Traps which are effectively the Terran equivalent of a very large Lunar mare (as I recall, depending how large the Siberian Traps originally were, they could have been larger than all but the two largest lunar maria). PGM were concentrated near the outlet dikes for a vast amount of lava (several million cubic kilometers worth) via some sulphur chemistry mechanism - apparently bubbles of PGM rich magma were trapped under the series of flows, leaching a bit of PGMs and other materials from each subsequent lava flow and increased in concentration as the Siberian traps eruptions continued.

The Bushveld complex apparently is a magma intrusion coupled with an asteroid impact. It is currently unknown if the asteroid contributed the PGMs present in this deposit (which is by far the world's largest deposit of platinum). PGMs were concentrated by the very slow cooling of the deposit which settled out them in two or three thin layers (or "reefs" in the local mining jargon).

Because there is almost no erosion on the Moon, similar deposits to either of the above would likely be deeply buried. It is worth noting however that because of the Moon's much lower gravity (and ignoring the moderately lower density of lunar crust), that pressure increases versus depth at about a sixth the rate it does on Earth.

So anyway, the Moon has some features that are similar to a couple of the largest PGM and gold bearing deposits on Earth and it allows for far deeper mining than can occur on Earth. Obviously, this isn't something that is going to happen next year, but it's not unreasonable to expect that there will eventually be mining of the Moon for resources that can be used on Earth and elsewhere in the Solar System.

Hey NASA, you heard of this place called JPL out by Cal Tech. They've been landing rovers on Mars for a while now which is WAY harder than landing one on the moon. Why don't you give them a call and stop being clueless and pathetic.

P.S.

Elon, please launch Falcon Heavy so we can shut NASA down and put the money in to your actual space program instead of the empty shell that is NASA these days

Congress would have to revoke their charter, I believe. Senators keep NASA around due to inertia, weather forecasts, the odd bit of national prestige, and contracts to companies from, or doing business in, their states.

Congress would have to revoke their charter, I believe. Senators keep NASA around due to inertia, weather forecasts, the odd bit of national prestige, and contracts to companies from, or doing business in, their states.

If you know anything about contractors and NASA, one word of advice...DON'T!

Not known wy (now, there it is, a new shpelling: do people still aspirate the "h" of the "wh"?) you replied to me, Slick, as I wasn't the one suggesting NASA be shut down, but I'll take it as good advice anyway.

It's not about shutting down NASA, it's about the use of contractors. I have seen and been on both sides of that coin. When NASA or the contractors get their collective act together, the other side is in for some serious trouble.

Oh, OK, thanks for the clarification. Thing is, I think it depends much on looking at the usefulness of a project or research program. Congress folks tend to look at funding/jobs/votes and tend to not give a shit about the worth of anything to the nation at large - if they even have the interest or ability to do so.

I'm only familiar in a passing way with the general kinds of things 'twixt contractors and agencies, mostly from dealing with some milspec bidding decades back. I had enough trouble with all t

Fairly basic engineering that the shouldn't be a single point of failure for all known life in the universe.

You dont have to go to another deep gravity well in order to spread life and/or humanity out, a fact that makes your argument completely empty. You are as short sighted as the people at NASA these days (who seem to want glory instead of logic.)

We should be working on sustainable independent space craft, starting with sustainable independent space stations. In the grand scheme of things, gravity wells are for noobs.

We should be working on sustainable independent space craft, starting with sustainable independent space stations. In the grand scheme of things, gravity wells are for noobs.

The obvious rebuttal is that we have only one example of a sustainable independent space craft right now - the planet Earth and it happens to have a very large gravity well. Gravity wells happen to also be places where resources get concentrated enough to be useful.

I apologize for the lateness of this second reply, but we are noobs in space. Building on Mars means that we can transplant most of our technologies and systems wholesale. It also has all the elements we need for survival. So we can build a civilization on Mars which could be sustainable even in the absence of any off world support.

Down the road, Mars can generate a second market for space-based goods as well.

I'm pretty sure NASA have heard of this JPL since the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech is a NASA laboratory [nasa.gov].

From TFA:

“A commercial lunar lander jointly developed with NASA would capitalize on NASA's previous investments and expertise in lander technologies. It also would stimulate a commercial capability to deliver payloads to the lunar surface reliably and cost-effectively."

So how is reaching out to commercial entities to improve their existing know-how instead of relying ONLY on their own labs"being clueless and pathetic"?

Because small plucky 'enterprise' makes for better political theater then stogy old boring companies.

The current american dream is short bursts of intense work by 'outsiders' followed by riches, so companies that exemplify that imagery get a lot of political attention. The older style of 'lots of planned hard work over long periods followed by reasonable long term profits' just isn't sexy. So there is a push to get NASA away from companies that have long consistant but boring track records (and, importan

NASA dicks around in low Earth orbit and the only way to send up an astronaut is on a Russian rocket. We should've been on Mars by 1980 at the latest, but we just. stopped.. trying. People will disagree with the above sentiment. It's jingoistic and Cold War-ish, they'll say. To them I reply, gloat over our corpses. You won and we lost. We no longer have the national will to do great things. Whether it's NASA alone or a coalition of public and private firms, we just don't have what it takes. You win.

To be fair, I think NASA discovered that things are harder and more expensive then the optimism of the 60s thought they would be. It was always assumed that some magical innovation would be right around the corner that would bring down the costs and allow for massive expansions, but nothing ever materialized. Just incremental improvements.

Each new President and congressional committee wants to give them something new to shoot for and then never really gives them the funding to be able to reach those goals. So, every few years they have to rearrange what they have been planing for 8 years or more to suit the new party in charge. If we had just given them a fraction of the military's budget and then let them decide on what goals they want to make we would probably already have a international moon base and have cheaper fuel on hand to experime

Congress and the president just need to quit making decisions for NASA. Just have a few scientists, a representative from congress and the president meet every 5 or 10 years and come up with a 10 year plan for NASA outlining their goals and budget for the decade and then have congress and the president sign off on it. Then keep that plan locked in until the the next meeting unless there is some need for more funding or a large change which would require a special meeting. I'm getting sick of NASA being used